Source: NewYorker.com
Professors may rue them, but MOOCs (massive online open courses) are here to stay. They are one more example of how the Internet is disrupting nearly everything.
A particularly thorny question is the matter of copyright: when a professor creates an online course, whose property is it? Can a university refuse to take it offline after a professor leaves the school? Professors can persuasively argue that they have copyright over their lecture notes, the publications they produce while at the university, etc.
My sense, however, is that the toggle will be set so that MOOCs will belong to the schools that employ the professors. Superstar professors—folks like Larry Summers—quite probably will be able to keep ownership or reap some sort of royalties. Why? Because that is the way the world works.
You may read more at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_heller.
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